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Podcast: When Churches Get Doctrine Right and Everything Else Wrong (Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry)

October 09, 2023 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Is Good Doctrine Good Enough?

In this episode, Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry discuss the connection between gospel doctrine and gospel culture and share what it looks like when a church is theologically careful but culturally sick.

You're Not Crazy

You're Not Crazy

Ray Ortlund, Sam Allberry

In this practical guide, seasoned pastors Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry help weary leaders renew their love for ministry by equipping them to build a gospel-centered culture into every aspect of their churches.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:15 - Theologically Careful but Seriously Sick

Matt Tully:
Sam and Ray, thank you so much for joining me on The Crossway Podcast.

Sam Allberry:
Thanks for having us.

Ray Ortlund:
Great to be with you.

Matt Tully:
In our circles—evangelical, Reformed, high view of Scripture—it's not uncommon to hear people emphasize the importance of sound doctrine and the centrality of the gospel. We're recording this interview right now at the Gospel Coalition conference, surrounded by 6,000 people who are here because they love the gospel and they see the importance of the gospel. I know that's not characteristic of all Christians in the US or of all churches in the US. There are many churches that don't prioritize those things, but we're surrounded by people who do. And yet, Sam, as you warn in this new book that you guys have written together, it's possible to be theologically careful and even gospel centered and yet still be seriously sick. Sick in what way?

Sam Allberry:
A few years ago I had a bit of a revelation reading through 1 Timothy. In chapter 5 Paul is talking about care for widows and he broadens it out to talk about our obligations for our own families. He says if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith. I had seen the category of denying the faith previously in the Bible, but it had always been in the context of people denying the truth of the resurrection or denying some key tenets like that. What Paul was showing me is there's more than one way to fall. You can fall doctrinally, but he's also saying here if you're not living out the love that the gospel is putting into our hearts, then you are also denying the faith that way. So you can be someone who is on one level orthodox by creed but in the case of 1. Timothy 5, if you're not providing for your relatives or members of your household, you're still denying the faith at the level of behavior, not at the level of what you profess to believe.

03:18 - What Is Gospel Culture?

Matt Tully:
Ray, anyone who's listened to you for any length of time knows that you're passionate about seeing gospel doctrine create gospel culture.

Sam Allberry:
I thought you were going to say about deer hunting, but that as well. The gospel stuff too.

Matt Tully:
You are passionate about that as well. We can see that on your Instagram feed. So if you were going to define both of those terms, gospel doctrine and gospel culture, how would you do that in just a couple sentences?

Ray Ortlund:
Well, it's great to be with you, Matt and Sam, on this podcast. And we wrote this book, You're Not Crazy, to answer those questions and to commend to every listener's conscience, as a matter of sacredness in the presence of God, clarity and joy about these very central glorious realities. What is gospel doctrine? Gospel doctrine is good news for bad people through the finished work of Christ on the cross and the endless power of the Holy Spirit, received with the empty hands of faith. That message, that doctrine, does not hang in mid air as a mere abstraction. Important as doctrinal subscription is, and that really does matter—by the way, what Sam and I are not saying in this book is something like (as we've all heard people say), It doesn't really matter what we believe as long as we love each other. Excuse me, that is a belief. And it is not biblical or apostolic. Jesus did not teach that. And it is gospel doctrine that creates and sustains real love for one another. So, gospel doctrine is essential but not merely abstract. What does it do? It's a generative power that creates beauty among us. That is the whole point. When we actually allow gospel doctrine to work with its own native authority and built-in tendencies, when we allow it to exert the influence God wants it to have among us, we go to a profound place in our relationships with one another that Sam and I are trying to describe with this simple phrase, gospel culture. Doctrine we can define clearly.

Matt Tully:
You can write it down.

Ray Ortlund:
Yeah. The choice of words really, really matters. Culture is intangibles, vibe, tone, posture. It's an experience and it's a delicate experience and it's a beautiful experience. And the doctrine is meant to open the door for us to walk together into those green pastures and beside those still waters. And when we go there, under the authority of the doctrine, then the world can not only hear the gospel in our message but the world can see the gospel in our community, our experience of community together. Sam and I long for this.

Matt Tully:
Ray, you just used the word allow a few times, that we need to allow the gospel doctrine to then make this change in our own hearts and in our culture that we enjoy as Christians. That seems to imply that there are ways that we could theoretically embrace the doctrine and not allow it to make those changes in us. What might that look like?

Ray Ortlund:
Well, yesterday Sam and I did a microevent here at the Gospel Coalition, and we showed on the screens this very disturbing photograph of a church from our country in the 1920s, and on the wall of the back of the church up behind the pulpit is a big banner that says, "Jesus Saves." Okay, that's doctrine. We love that doctrine. That's true. We agree with that church. Jesus really does save. But the problem is that standing in a place of honor up in front of the congregation there in this photograph are about thirty or thirty-five Klansmen in their robes. The doctrine is Jesus saves; we agree with that. The culture of that church is white supremacy; we abhor that. And I have to guess that the people in that church were not thinking, Hypothetically, we agree that Jesus saves, but at a practical level in our relationships we deny that Jesus saves. We are a living denial of the very message we preach from the pulpit. Matt, it's not just an egregious, obvious example like that.

Matt Tully:
Because it's easy to look at that and think, Well, yeah, they were just obviously so misled, so deceived. But that doesn't happen to me.

Ray Ortlund:
First Timothy 5 really landed on Sam, but Galatians 2 was the passage that got up in my face. Galatians 2:11–21, where the apostle Paul chews out the apostle Peter, and the issue is gospel culture. Paul is saying to Peter that by your behavior their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. And Paul says, I saw that their conduct . . . . Peter hadn't changed his message, his preaching, but he had changed his relationships with Gentile new believers, and Paul saw that as a doctrinal betrayal. And he makes the case in this paragraph for the foundational doctrine of justification by faith alone. If all we need to be fully legit and kosher in the sight of God is Jesus received with the empty hands of faith, who does Peter think he is than to reintroduce and require the kosher laws of the book of Leviticus, which Jesus himself fulfilled by his cleanness? So betraying gospel doctrine by betraying gospel culture is not only a problem for Klansmen. In the first century here in Antioch, it was an apostolic problem. No surprise, then, that it's sometimes a problem among us today. We have got to keep our eyes peeled.

Sam Allberry:
There's a wonderful postscript to that because the way Paul did that we don't know exactly what that looked like. The footage would have been fascinating. But it just occurred to me that at the end of 2 Peter, years after this, Peter refers to Paul as "our beloved brother, Paul." And so Peter evidently received that in the right spirit and allowed the Lord to correct him through Paul's rebuke. So you see something of the outworking of gospel culture from Peter's later references to Paul and how much Paul means to him. There was no rift between them beyond that moment.

Ray Ortlund:
Here's what's at stake. Excuse me, Matt, for interrupting you. You were about to speak, but I always interrupt Sam, so we just understand this together. Here's why this matters so much. In the Gospels, Peter denies Christ to secure his physical survival, as he understands it in the moment. Here in Galatians 2 in Antioch, peter denies Christ again for the sake of his ecclesiastical survival. Because he says here, Before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they showed up, boy did he backpedal. So Peter was getting the message, You know that conference we invited you to preach at in Jerusalem next year? You can be uninvited, buddy. You just watch your step. And Peter caved. Twice Paul calls his behavior hypocrisy. What's at stake here is our integrity before the Lord, our beauty with one another. So Sam and I wrote this book, You're Not Crazy, with a deep sense of conviction and urgency. We feel that there's a gift the Lord wants to give this generation that we're just at the front end of sort of discovering. And so we're praying, actually, for just awakening and revival.

Matt Tully:
It also strikes me that underlying this whole book, this whole project, this whole emphasis is a really keen awareness of our propensity—even as sincere, true Christians—to deceive ourselves. We can tell ourselves and really think, I believe the right things. My doctrine is solid. And yet we can live in such a way that we deny that doctrine.

Sam Allberry:
Professing sound doctrine is essential, but it's not on its own sufficient. The New Testament shows us that the demons professed sound doctrine on one level. The demons believe in one God, at least they shudder. So it's not merely enough to be saying the right things at some official theological level. The sign that that truth has really come into the depths of heart is that we're different because of it. And what is true of us individually is true of us communally. A sign that we as a Christian community in a local church have deeply received the love of Jesus is that it changes our collective behavior, not merely our private, individual behavior.

Ray Ortlund:
And Matt, here's another way to look at it. Let me flip it into a positive assertion. The danger is truly alarming and real and always present. But on the other hand, Paul says in Galatians 2:21—and J. Gresham Machen, in his commentary on Galatians, says that Galatians 2:21 is the key verse to the whole book of Galatians—Paul says to Peter, "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose." So he's insinuating that Peter is nullifying the grace of God and trivializing the cross of Christ. And it's so understandable to me, but what if we take the risk, we pastors, take the risk of magnifying the grace of God? What if we move all our chips over onto that square, so to speak? What if we dare to give ourselves permission to believe all out and wholeheartedly in the grace of God and lay everything in our ministries on the line, following the vector of the grace of God as far as it will go? Could we take that risk? Could we join Paul in magnifying the grace of God and honoring the cross of Christ as truly sufficient? Could we stop worrying about the grace of God? Could we stop fearing the grace of God and rejoice in it and put everything on the line for the lifting up and honoring of the grace of God and the finished work of Christ on the cross? The implications are startling and glorious and worth reaching for.

14:35 - Does Gospel-Centered Language Water Down the Message?

Matt Tully:
Ray, do you ever worry that, at least in our circles, the prevalence of this gospel-centered language—gospel this, gospel that—that that has accidentally served to water down our understanding of the gospel itself and our appreciation of what we're actually talking about?

Ray Ortlund:
Yes, because we corrupt everything. Over the last twenty years or so we've seen a sort of renaissance of gospel thinking in this American and British evangelical world that we all live in, and we're so profoundly grateful. Twenty years ago. And it was really sparked by sermons by Tim Keller that I was listening to. I went through my own gospel renaissance. I rediscovered justification by faith alone, substitution, imputation, union with Christ, and so forth—these glorious truths. I was captivated and messed with in the most wonderful way. So I celebrate and rejoice in the very thing you're talking about, Matt. Can we become oblivious and insensitive to the very thing we're talking about? Yes. So I don't know what else to do except just cry out to God, Lord, deliver us from ourselves. Help us to understand what we ourselves are talking about. And treat Jesus as real.

Sam Allberry:
I think another aspect to this is Jesus says to the Pharisees in John 5, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think by them you have eternal life." And most of us would think that's great. They're diligently studying the Bible. Would that more people were doing that. They believe that eternal life is at stake. Excellent. Then Jesus says, "The Scriptures testify about me, but you do not come to me." So it is possible to be a real Scripture person—to believe how serious Scripture is, how serious truth is—and not be coming to Jesus. That's frightening. That's really frightening. And one of the dangers of our rediscovery of all this wonderful theology is that we can start to love theology for its own sake. We can love being right more than we love the Lord. And that can look like orthodoxy because we're making sure we're right, but it means we could be right without being loving, which actually means we're wrong. So this is another way of trying to catch us out with that danger. And one of the reasons we love thinking about this and writing about this is because our own hearts have a tendency to do that. There have been times in my Christian life and ministry where I've been a bit more concerned with just getting the theology right than in actually loving the people I'm meant to be serving. So it's something we all need to keep looking at.

17:22 - Key Marks of Gospel Culture

Matt Tully:
Let's talk about some of the key marks of a gospel culture. You guys highlight a number of these in the book. We can only look at a couple of them, but one of them that stood out to me was honesty. Sam, why is honesty such an important litmus test for whether or not a church is truly cultivating a gospel culture?

Sam Allberry:
There are many ways to answer that question. The answer that most quickly comes to my mind is that the gospel makes it safe for God to know the worst things about me. There is no condemnation now, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If that really is the case, I don't need to wear a fake Christian mask when I go to church. If we're all a community of people whom God has forgiven, if we're all, in the language of Paul, the worst of sinners, and yet Christ has shown grace to us, then we shouldn't be trying to act at church as if, Oh, my life is together and I'm really doing okay when we're not. Because the gospel calls our bluff, in one sense. It's Jesus showing us what we're really like, and repentance is coming to terms with what we're really like, and then receiving all this undeserved, beautiful grace and love from God. So that should work itself out horizontally in a culture where we now have that sense of relief in finally being able to drop the pretense and be real with each other. James 5:16 has become one of my favorite verses where he says, "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed." So we don't merely confess to God. I find it easier to confess to God than to Ray because God already knows the worst things about me, and Ray doesn't.

Matt Tully:
And we're secure, in some sense, in God's acceptance of us, but sometimes we wonder, What's that other person going to do?

Sam Allberry:
There's more face to lose at the horizontal level. But James says, "Confess your sins to one another." We need to do that. And it's healing for us when we do. And what we're talking about with honesty is not what our culture calls authenticity, where I've taken my personality type and I know my foibles and I put those on the table in a kind of defiant way and say, This is just the way I am. You've got to bend to my idiosyncrasies. James is not just saying share your quirky brokenness; he's saying confess your sins. We're talking at the category of sin and confession and being prayed for because of these things. There's a way of doing a sort of fake honesty where we're basically allowing for each other's being a jerk. I've seen that dynamic at work and that is not what we're talking about here. Honesty is not just This is the kind of stuff I do and this is the kind of person I am, but honesty is actually honesty about how ugly that is before the Lord.

Matt Tully:
Ray, if this is so intimately tied to the gospel itself, this willingness to be honest before God but also before other believers, why is it that churches so often feel like the place where we can be the least honest about how we're really doing?

Ray Ortlund:
Well, that's a searching question. It's a disturbing question. It's a good question. As a pastor I would have to say I feel that I am personally, to some measure, responsible for this anomaly. I think Paul in Galatians 2 would use the word hypocrisy. I made the mistake of finding a box of hard copy sermons I preached in the 1980s a couple of years. Then I made a second mistake of actually reading a couple of them, and they were horrible. I was doing what I thought was right at the time. It was all I knew. But basically, my preaching ministry, as I understood it, was to open up the Bible, preach expositionally, and help these sorry Christians get it together. And so it was a ministry of challenge, it was a ministry of instruction, it was a ministry of correction. And there's something good about all of that, but I honestly did not understand the suffering that people were walking into church with. I didn't understand the experience of impasse and defeat and so forth. That's the baggage everybody's carrying into church. I thought I was dealing with basically well-put-together human beings—and I saw myself that way, ridiculously—who just needed to polish this and that. That premise inadvertently but effectively created a culture of appearances. But what if we all understand we're walking into church with nothing but need, and we're opening up the empty hands of faith before the all-sufficient Christ? Well, if that's the premise, if that's the reality of it, then we can talk about anything. We can put out on the table with one another what's really going on. And ultimately, I believe, the honesty that Sam's been talking about and that we talk about in the book is really an outcome from humility. I'm trying to remember, Sam, whether it was Charles Simeon who said, "The foundation of our faith"—or the major premise of our faith, however he put it—"is, one, humility; two, humility; three, humility."

Sam Allberry:
I remember the quote, but I can't remember who wrote it. I know it's in your son Gavin's book somewhere. It may have been someone earlier than Simeon.

Ray Ortlund:
I believe that, and I think we all believe that. But if, as I am ministering, serving, preaching Scripture and so forth, if a feeling sneaks into my heart that it's my very orthodoxy, my very biblicism that makes me superior, then in that moment the problem is not I'm believing the doctrine and taking it too seriously. The problem is I'm not really believing it at all. At least not at a convictional level. There's a difference between an opinion and a conviction. An opinion is a belief I have that floats on the surface of my mind. Eric Clapton is the greatest guitarist of all time. Okay, now that's my opinion. I actually believe it's true, but that's an opinion. A conviction is a more profound reality. It's where I'll stake my life. And if my orthodoxy is only of the nature of opinion, it can actually feed my pride. But when my orthodoxy percolates down to the level of conviction, and the glory of Christ actually gets through to me existentially and personally, that is more profound. Then I'm humbled. And that cracks my heart open, Matt, to be a real friend to you, whatever that might cost me. Now we're finally getting somewhere.

Matt Tully:
And as the story of finding those sermons can testify to, pastors and church leaders play a unique role. They have a unique shaping power on their churches when it comes to cultivating this culture of honesty among them. I wonder, Sam, though, sometimes pastors can say, and I've heard pastors say this to me, I know that I need accountability. I know that I need to be honest with people in my church. That is an important facet of our lives as Christians. And yet, I feel like I can't do that with people in my church because I'm the pastor. If I share what I'm really struggling with, if I'm really honest with them about stuff, they're not going to respect me. It's going to undercut my ministry. It's going to cause them to even not trust me in different ways. And so maybe there are people outside of my church that I can kind of be honest with, but I really can't do that in my church. How would you respond to a pastor who worries about that?

Sam Allberry:
It's a very legitimate worry. I get it. And what we're not talking about is in the pulpit bearing your soul about everything all the time. That would actually be burdening your congregation. There's an appropriate honesty in the pulpit and there's an inappropriate kind of honesty. There may be people that you share your deepest, most personal things with outside the church. That can be a very healthy, useful thing to have. But part of Christian leadership is that we're not just leading in truth and understanding, we're leading in repentance. And people need to learn repentance from how we lead. And some of that is going to be reflected in the way we preach. Paul talks to Timothy about the importance of the people seeing his progress. Timothy is not meant to be presenting himself as if, Yeah, I know how everything works. I've got the Christian life sorted out. Timothy is meant to be presenting himself as a shepherd who is also still a sheep, because as church leaders, we're also church members. We're still Christian pilgrims ourselves. And so part of what we're leading people in is how to be following Jesus, how to be progressing towards Jesus. And that means that at times it is really appropriate to say, You know, this passage has really changed my thinking on this. I think I had this wrong over the years. Or, This text has made me realize just how irritable I can be. Because what we're doing there is we're modeling to people how the Bible convicts us of sin and reassures us of grace and how that grace changes our hearts to want to live for Christ. And as we do that in the appropriate ways, we're making it easier and safer for other people to start to share the things that they're needing to grow in as well.

Matt Tully:
Ray, have you seen that dynamic as well in your own church and ministry over the years, where your willingness to be honest has opened the door for others in the church to do the same?

Ray Ortlund:
Yes. And I think what Sam just said is very wise because there is a kind of honesty that really is self-display. It changes the subject from Jesus and his gospel of grace to me and my issues. That's not what we are commending.

Sam Allberry:
The congregation is not there to be our therapist. Ray, I remember our pastor, T.J., mentioned at one of the early sermons he heard you preach at Immanuel. I don't know what the passage was. The passage evidently touched at some point on sexual sin, and you apparently began your sermon by saying, "Your pastor is a sexual sinner." And you then reassured him and said, "Don't worry. I'm not cheating on my wife, I'm not looking at porn." But you said, apparently, "If you knew the thoughts that went through my mind, you might not want to be my friend." And if I've reflected that correctly, T.J. said that that was a paradigm shift for him because you were being appropriately honest, not inappropriately. You were being honest in a way that opened up conversation, not that made people worried about you. But you then made it easier for other people to then start to begin that vital process, particularly today, of being able to talk about their own sexual sin.

Ray Ortlund:
Yes. And especially in Nashville. We have our own local religion in Nashville. It's the worship of appearances. Everyone in Nashville is on stage performing. Our doctrine of heaven in Nashville is getting rave reviews. Our doctrine of hell is being panned or even just ignored. And our Salvation is performing really impressively. And I suppose it's just human nature. It's the world all over. But what if there is one community in that world of false religion and self-exaltation concealing self hatred and shame and defeat? What if there's one community that flips that and actually is unashamed, not thrown into existential crisis by owning up to our actual failings with one another in appropriate settings and in appropriate ways? But here's what I believe, Matt. Every one of us, as Christians, must have one or two friends in the same city or town in which we live who know what we're really facing. They know how we're really doing, including how we're not doing well. We don't trot this out in front of everybody, but there is real transparency. I don't use the word accountability, Matt, because I've seen the category accountability used in a bullying and coercive way to corner people and pressure people and belittle them. But transparency is mutual. So, two or three Christian friends getting together regularly and walking together in transparency, living in James 5:16: "Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed." We've got to be there. Every single one of us must have friends like that. If we don't believe in the Roman Catholic confessional, and I don't and I hope nobody does, still James 5:16 is not going away.

Matt Tully:
That confessional taps into something that we need, the true confession of our sin to another human.

Ray Ortlund:
So how do we do that? Okay, we're Protestants. And if we don't like the Roman Catholic confessional, how are we going to obey James 5:16?

Matt Tully:
Sam, another key mark of gospel culture is an eagerness to show honor to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. And this one stood out to me a lot because I don't typically think of showing honor to other Christians as a priority for me when I walk into church on a Sunday morning. I don't think of that as a goal that I should have, to intentionally honor the people around me. Share a little bit more about why that is so important and what that even looks like practically.

Sam Allberry:
In one sense that's very easy because the Bible tells us to. Romans 12:10: "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." It's part of how we love each other, with brotherly affection. We want to honor each other, and what Paul means by showing honor is, because he gives us an example of this himself with Epaphroditus in Philippians 2, it's showing the ways in which people are evidencing the presence of Christ in their lives. It may be something they've done or maybe in something of the way that they are. It's a way of pointing out in someone else's life, either to them or about them to others, ways in which we're seeing Jesus making a tangible difference to the way that they are. It's, Let's all high five over what Ray's just done—that kind of thing. So Paul says we need to show honor. He says in Philippians 2, "Honor such men as these." So it is right for us to esteem publicly those who really are letting Christ change them. Here Paul says not just to show honor but to outdo one another in showing honor. In other words, this is not token. This is not sort of begrudgingly do this a little bit. But outdo one another in this. Ray's often pointed out this is the one place in the Bible we're told to be competitive. And the more we are then the more everybody wins because we're competing to put the spotlight of amazingness on other people around us. And if our fallen tendency is firstly not to confess our sins but to try and show the Instagram version of our Christianity, another part of our tendency is to seek honor from others rather than seeking to give honor to others. So I think the flip side of being real about our own sins is that we're also being real about one another's sanctification and the ways we see that happening in real time around us. And it's a beautiful thing. Paul said earlier in chapter 12, "For the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than you ought to think." The flip side is not thinking of other people more lowly than we ought to think. And honouring one another is a way of not thinking I'm the big deal in the room, but actually thinking, Look at how Matt is serving us so faithfully with this Crossway podcast. It's putting the attention on other people and not seeking glory ourselves. Then it deflects away from our own egos and our own self-importance.

Matt Tully:
Ray, what's the difference between showing honor and flattery?

Ray Ortlund:
It's an important question. Flattery is basically lying with a smile. And it can't be trusted. It shouldn't be respected. Flattery is making something up, and it also tends to be general and vague. You're awesome, you're amazing, blah, blah, blah. But honor is noticing something real about someone. Colossians 1: "Christ in you, the hope of glory." That glory is showing up right now. Here we are, sitting around this table. Every single one of us is a flawed, needy, high-maintenance sinner. And we're going to heaven. We're not going to hell anymore. And Jesus actually indwells us, and he's becoming obvious. Y'all are not hard to read. Well, that's amazing. That's truly awesome. Let's celebrate that. Let's notice that. Let's talk about that and encourage one another in this way. Just this morning here at the hotel I was coming down in the elevator, and one of the Crossway team got in at another floor. It turned out he was part of the crew behind the scenes helping to create this book You're Not Crazy. I hadn't met him before. Sam and I have our names on the cover, but the reality is there are many people whose names are not on the cover who helped create that book—artists, editors, typesetters, podcasters, videographers. They all deserve to be noticed and lifted up. And when we feel that sense of indignation within until Matt and Maggie feel encouraged and noticed and seen, I think that's what the gospel creates in us—an urgency to make sure people are noticed and encouraged. Because we all know this life is not easy, and living for Christ in this world is not easy. We're going to get through this, but one of the ways that Lord's going to get us through this is by putting us together as a body of mutual encouragement and honor, and helping each other just keep taking the next step.

Matt Tully:
I'm just struck by the pairing of a culture of honesty paired with a culture of honor. That has the potential to unleash such a power, such a dynamism in the life of a church, in the life of a ministry or organization, in our own lives, a family's life. When you have those two things paired together, it allows us to live openly and truly and joyfully, knowing that not just God has accepted us for who we are with all of our failings and weaknesses, but other Christians as well. We all see the Lord's work in each other's lives and can actually live together.

Ray Ortlund:
It is so freeing not to need to be impressive anymore. It's relaxing. We can be impressive or we can be known, but we can't be both.

38:39 - The *You’re Not Crazy* Podcast

Matt Tully:
This new book that you guys have written together, You're Not Crazy, it shares a name with the podcast that you two co-host together. Ray, I wonder if you could share where that title comes from. It sounds like a Ray Ortlund title.

Ray Ortlund:
Well, gosh, Sam, I don't remember.

Sam Allberry:
I do. You came up with the title, You're Not Crazy, because those three words have been so life giving to each of us. I remember one of the first times we met I was in a difficult place. Things were feeling off. I was struggling with aspects of church culture and that kind of thing. And I was trying to articulate that, and he just said to me, You're not crazy. In other words, you're not crazy for feeling as though something's amiss when on the one hand, there's what seems to be doctrinal soundness, but on the other hand there isn't emotional health, there isn't honesty, people are coming to church fearfully and wondering what they're going to get hit with this week. You're not crazy. And you were the one who said we should call the podcast, You're Not Crazy.

Matt Tully:
Ray, what have been some of the main through lines, main comments, or types of questions that you guys have received over the last few years from listeners of the podcast? What's the feedback that you've been receiving on this stuff?

Ray Ortlund:
Well, I think, Sam, both of us have been really astonished at the response. I underestimated the urgency that people feel about discovering gospel doctrine and creating gospel culture. And I underestimated the readiness of so many pastors and church leaders to go there. So, Matt, I think, in God's mercy, we've just come through twenty years of doctrinal rejuvenation. I am so grateful. Here at the Gospel Coalition, walk through the book displays that are for sale. We live in an embarrassment of riches. You guys at Crossway are hitting one home run after another, offering the world these fantastic books. We are so rich, and we are all also grateful. Now, we are ready to take the next step and let that very gospel have its full effect upon us. Let's believe it with all our hearts and let that gospel accomplish in us and among us the very thing God sent it to accomplish—namely, to create the beauty of human relationships. I think we're ready, and the response is very encouraging.

Matt Tully:
Praise God. Ray, Sam, thank you so much for taking the time today to talk with us and cast this vision for gospel doctrine, creating gospel culture, not just in our churches but in our own lives as individuals as well. We appreciate it.

Ray Ortlund:
Thank you, Matt.

Sam Allberry:
Thanks.

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